Godzilla
Godzilla is a 1998 American science fiction monster film directed and co-written by Roland Emmerich and a reimagining of Toho's Godzilla franchise. It is the 23rd film in the Godzilla franchise and the first Godzilla film to be completely produced by a Hollywood studio. It stars Matthew Broderick, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria, Kevin Dunn and Jean Reno. This film was a co-production between Centropolis Entertainment and TriStar Pictures, with TriStar distributing theatrically, and Sony Pictures Entertainment for home media. It also marks the only time that producer Devlin and director Emmerich worked on an intellectual property (IP) not of their own. The film is dedicated to the memory of Godzilla franchise producer and creator Tomoyuki Tanaka, who died during the film's production. and grossed $136 million domestically and $379 million worldwide at the end of its theatrical run. Planned sequels were abandoned and an animated series was produced instead. This film was released in May 20, 1998 to negative reviews from critics and fans. In later years, Toho (the Godzilla IP owners) officially retconned TriStar's Godzilla as "Zilla" for future appearances. The character has since appeared in other media as "Zilla". Plot A marine iguana nest is exposed to the fallout of radiation following a military nuclear test in French Polynesia. Many years later, in the South Pacific Ocean, a Japanese fishing vessel is suddenly attacked by an enormous sea creature, with only one seaman surviving. Traumatized, he is questioned by a mysterious Frenchman in a hospital regarding what he saw, to which he only replies "Gojira." Dr. Niko "Nick" Tatopoulos, an NRC scientist, is in the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine researching the effects of radiation on wildlife, but he is interrupted by the arrival of an official from the U.S. State Department. He is sent toPanama and Jamaica, escorted by the military, to study a trail of wreckage across land leading to the recovered Japanese fishing ship with massive claw marks on it. Nick identifies skin samples he discovered in the shipwreck as belonging to an unknown species. He dismisses the military's theory that the creature is a living dinosaur, instead deducing it is a mutant created by nuclear testing. The creature travels to New York City during the rainy season, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. The city is evacuated before the U.S. military attempts to kill it but fails in an initial attempt. Nick collects a blood sample, and after performing a pregnancy test, discovers that the creature reproduces asexually and is collecting food for its offspring. Eventually, Nick meets up with his ex-girlfriend, Audrey Timmonds, a young reporter who wants to find a story. While she visits him, she uncovers a classified tape in his provisional military tent which concerns the origins of the monster and turns it over to the media. She hopes to have her report put on TV in hopes to become famous, but her superior and boss, Charles Caiman, uses the tape in his broadcast, declaring it as his own discovery, and dubs the creature "Godzilla". With the released mainly because of his actions, Nick is removed from the operation and abandons Audrey. Soon, he is kidnapped by Philippe Roaché, an " guy" he met before coming to Manhattan. Revealing himself as an agent of the French secret service, Philippe and his colleagues have been keeping a close watch on the events and plan to cover up their country's role in the nuclear testing that created Godzilla. Suspecting a nest somewhere in the city, they cooperate with Nick to trace and destroy it. Following a with the military, Godzilla dives into the Hudson River to evade the military, where it is attacked by Navy submarines. After colliding with torpedoes, Godzilla sinks. Believing it is finally dead, the authorities . Nick and Philippe's strike team, followed by Audrey and her cameraman Victor "Animal" Palotti, find the nest inside Madison Square Garden and locate over 200 eggs. Before the French can succeed in destroying them, the eggs suddenly hatch and the offspring attack. Nick, Animal, Audrey and Philippe take refuge in the Garden's broadcast booth and successfully send out a live news-report to alert the military of what will happen if the offspring escape. A prompt response involving an airstrike is initiated as the four escape moments before Air Force jets bomb the arena. Audrey and Nick reconcile and kiss, before the adult Godzilla, having survived, emerges from the Garden's ruins. Enraged by the deaths of its young, it chases the four across Manhattan. After a taxi chase, they manage to trap Godzilla within the Brooklyn Bridge where the returning Air Force jets manage to shoot it down. Godzilla dies from its wounds, while the remaining citizens celebrate. Audrey tells Caiman that she quits working for him after what he did, before leaving with Nick. Philippe (taking a tape that Animal was recording and promising to return it after "removing a few items from it") thanks Nick for his help and parts ways. In the ruins of Madison Square Garden, a single surviving egg hatches and the emerging hatchling roars. Cast * Matthew Broderick as Dr. Niko "Nick" Tatopoulos * Jean Reno as Philippe Roaché * Maria Pitillo as Audrey Timmonds * Hank Azaria as Victor "Animal" Palotti * Kevin Dunn as Col. Anthony Hicks * Michael Lerner as Mayor Ebert * Harry Shearer as Charles Caiman * Arabella Field as Lucy Palotti * Vicki Lewis as Dr. Elsie Chapman * Lorry Goldman as Gene * Doug Savant as Sgt. O'Neal * Malcolm Danare as Dr. Mendel Craven * Ralph Manza as Fisherman Joe * Glenn Morshower as Kyle Terrington * Chris Ellis as Gen. Hunter Anderson * Richard Gant as Admiral Phelps * Clyde Kusatsu as Japanese Tanker Skipper * Nancy Cartwright as Caiman's Secretary * Gary A. Hecker as Creature Vocal Effects * Frank Welker as Creature Vocal Effects * Kurt Carley as Godzilla (suit performance, uncredited) Production Development Godzilla as designed byStan Winston. American film producer and distributor Henry G. Saperstein (who had co-produced and distributed past Godzilla films for the American market through his studio UPA) received permission from Toho to pitch a new Godzilla film to Hollywood studios, stating, "For ten years I pressured Toho to make one in America. Finally they agreed." Saperstein initially met with Sony Picturesproducers Cary Woods and Robert N. Fried for discussions regarding a live-action Mr. Magoo film but the discussions led to the availability of the rights to Godzilla. Interested, Woods and Fried proposed the idea to Columbia Pictures, but were initially rejected. Woods stated, "We pitched the idea to Columbia and they passed outright. Their response was they felt it had the potential for camp".16 The two also tried to pitch the idea to TriStar Pictures but were also shot down, Fried stated, "TriStar did originally pass on the project. The people who were running the studio at that particular time may not have seen commercial potential there, may not have thought that it would make a great film." Taking advice from his wife, Woods instead went over the executives' heads and proposed the idea to Peter Guber, the then-Chairman of the Board and CEO of Sony Pictures. Guber became enthusiastic about the idea, seeing Godzilla as an "international brand" and set the film up at TriStar, Woods recalled, "Peter got it; he saw the movie in his head. He was like, ‘Godzilla, the fire-breathing monster?! Yesss!'" TriStar Vice Chairman Ken Lemberger was sent to Tokyo to oversee the deal in obtaining the Godzilla rights from Toho in mid-1992. Sony's initial offer included a $300,000-400,000 advance payment with an annual licensing fee for the Godzilla character, as well as production bonuses, exclusive distribution and merchandising rights for Japan, a profit percentage from international ticket sales and merchandising, usage rights to some of the monsters from the first 15 Godzilla films, and allow Toho to continue producing domestic Godzilla films while TriStar developed their film. Sequentially, Toho sent Sony a document of rules on how to treat Godzilla, Robert Fried stated, "They even sent me a four-page, single-spaced memo describing the physical requirements the Godzilla in our film had to have. They’re very protective." In October 1992, TriStar formally announced their acquisition of the rights to Godzilla from Toho to produce a trilogy of Godzilla films, with the promise of "remaining true to the original series—cautioning against nuclear weapons and runaway technology." After TriStar's announcement, many of the original Godzilla filmmakers expressed support for the film; Haruo Nakajima (who portrayed Godzilla from 1954-1972) stated, "I'm pleased. I hope that a competition will spring up between Toho and TriStar," Koichi Kawakita (special effects director of the Heisei Godzilla films) stated, "I have great expectations. I’m looking forward to seeing it, not only because I direct special effects for Godzilla films but also because I am a movie fan," Teruyoshi Nakano (special effects director of the late Showa Godzilla films) stated, "I'm pleased that a new approach will be taken", and Ishirō Honda (director of various Showa Godzilla films) stated, "It will probably be much more interesting than the ones currently being produced in Japan." Screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio were tapped to write the script and submitted their final draft in late 1994. Earlier that year, Jan de Bont became attached to direct and began pre-production on the film for a 1996 summer release. De Bont's Godzilla would have discarded the character's atomic origin and replaced it with one wherein Godzilla is an artificial creation constructed by Atlantians to defend humanity against a shape-shifting extraterrestrial monster called "The Gryphon". Stan Winston and his company were employed to do the effects for the film. Winston crafted sculptures of Godzilla and The Gryphon. De Bont later left the project after TriStar refused to approve his budget of $100–120 million. In November 2018, an unofficial digital graphic novel adaptation of Elliott and Rossio's unproduced Godzilla script was released online. Entitled Godzilla '94, the graphic novel features artwork by Todd Tennant, who worked with Rossio on the project. Emmerich and Devlin Prior to the release of Independence Day, director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin signed on to do Godzilla under the condition they would be able to handle the film their way, Devlin stated, "I told Sony that I would do the film but on my own terms, with Godzilla as a fast-moving animal out of nature, rather than some strange kind of creature." Emmerich and Devlin were the first filmmakers approached by then TriStar executive Chris Lee to do Godzilla but initially turned the offer down, Devlin stated, "Both of us thought it was a dopey idea the first time we talked. When Chris came back to us, we still thought it was a dopey idea." Despite praising Elliott and Rossio's script, Emmerich discarded it, stating, "It had some really cool things in it, but it is something I never would have done. The last half was like watching two creatures go at it. I simply don’t like that." Emmerich instead decided to develop new ideas from scratch, stating, "I didn’t want to make the original Godzilla, I wanted nothing to do with it. I wanted to make my own. We took part of original movie’s basic storyline, in that the creature becomes created by radiation and it becomes a big challenge. But that’s all we took. Then we asked ourselves what we would do today with a monster movie and a story like that. We forgot everything about the original Godzilla right there." Creature design Tatopoulos showed this concept drawing (his personal favorite) to Emmerich and Devlin at Cannes 1996 which convinced them to move forward with the project. Emmerich decided to completely reinvent Godzilla's design because he thought the original Toho design "didn't make sense". Emmerich also discarded the previous design approved by Jan de Bont, stating, "I saw the creature that they designed for first attempt. Jan De Bont created a Godzilla that was very close to the original, but it was not right because today we wouldn’t do it like that." Patrick Tatopoulos was hired by Emmerich to design Godzilla. According to Tatopoulos, the only specific instructions Emmerich gave him was that it should be able to run incredibly fast. Godzilla, originally conceived as a robust, erect-standing, plantigrade reptilian sea monster, was reimagined by Tatopoulos as a lean, digitigrade bipedal iguana-like creature that stood with its back and tail parallel to the ground. Godzilla's color scheme was designed to reflect and blend in with the urban environment. At one point, it was planned to use motion capture from a human to create the movements of the computer-generated Godzilla, but it ended up looking too much like a human in a suit. Tatopoulos thought the designs that Ricardo Delgado, Crash McCreery and Joey Orosco provided for Jan de Bont took the design in a wrong approach, stating, "What they did which was a mistake in my mind was, rather than going in a new direction they tried to alter and make the old one better. And when you do that, first of all I think it’s very disrespectful. It’s more disrespectful for me to alter something existing than to take a fresh new direction." Tatopoulos took inspiration from The Jungle Book in terms of Godzilla's chin, stating, "One of the inspirations was a character I loved as a kid, the tiger in Jungle Book, Shere Khan. He had this great chin thing and I always loved it; he looked scary, evil but you respected him. I thought, let’s try to give him a chin and I felt it still looked realistic but he had this different thing that you hadn’t seen before." Tatopoulos created four concept art pieces and a 2-foot tall maquette for a meeting with Toho. Tatopoulos and Emmerich attended the meeting to pitch their Godzilla to then Toho chairman Isao Matsuoka, Godzilla film producer Shogo Tomiyama, and Godzilla special effects director Koichi Kawakita. They unveiled Tatopoulos' artwork and maquette and the Toho trio remained silent for a few minutes, Emmerich recalled, "They were speechless, they stared at it, and there was silence for a couple minutes, and then they said, ‘Could you come back tomorrow?’ I thought for sure we didn't have the movie then." Tomiyama later recalled that "It was so different we realized we couldn't make small adjustments. That left the major question of whether to approve it or not." Even though Tomiyama was not allowed to remove the artwork and maquette from the studio premise, Tomiyama visited Godzilla producer and creator Tomoyuki Tanaka, whose failing health prevented him from attending the meeting, to explain Tatopoulos' design, stating, "I told him, ‘It’s similar to Carl Lewis, with long legs, and it runs fast'." The following morning, Matsuoka approved the design, stating that Tatopoulos "kept the spirit of Godzilla." Writing Despite receiving approval from Toho, TriStar had yet to green-light the film. Emmerich and Devlin wrote the script on spec, with the condition that the screenplay would return to the filmmakers if the studio did not immediately approve it. Emmerich and Devlin wrote the first draft in five and a half weeks at Emmerich's vacation house in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Emmerich and Devlin decided to abandon the Atlantis origin established in Elliott and Rossio's script in favor of the radiation origin established in the Toho films, Devlin stated, "In some of the early drafts of the script by others, they had Godzilla being an alien planted here. What Japan had originally come up with regarding nuclear radiation — you can’t abandon that. It’s too important to what Godzilla is all about." Emmerich and Devlin also decided to treat their Godzilla more animal-like than monstrous, Tatopoulos stated, "We were creating an animal. We weren’t creating a monster." Emmerich and Devlin also decided to give their Godzilla the ability to burrow underground, Devlin stated, "We discovered that certain kinds of lizards can burrow, so we decided to give him that capability." Chameleon-like skin change was also considered but abandoned later during production. Emmerich and Devlin also abandoned Godzilla's iconic atomic breath in favor of a "power breath", where their Godzilla would simply blow objects away by exhaling a strong wind-like breath. However, news of the power breath leaked before the film's release, which outraged fans and forced Emmerich and Devlin to make last minute changes on scenes involving the power breath, effects supervisor Volker Engel stated, "Dean and Roland wanted this monster to retain a certain menace and credibility, but Godzilla’s breath is something everyone expects to see at some point, So they came up with instances in which you would see something like the old breath, but with a kind of logic applied to it. We make the assumption that something in his breath, when it comes in contact with flame, causes combustive ignition. So you get this flame-thrower effect, which causes everything to ignite." As a way to make their Godzilla a threat to mankind, Emmerich and Devlin also gave their Godzilla the ability to lay hundreds of eggs (via parthenogenesis) and rapidly spawn offspring that could spawn offspring of their own and quickly overrun the planet. The first draft was submitted to Sony on December 19, 1996, then-President of Sony Pictures John Calley forwarded the script to Bob Levin of marketing to brainstorm marketing ideas. Pre-production TriStar green-lit the film soon after Emmerich and Devlin's completion of the first draft, bestowing complete creative freedom to write, produce, and direct on the filmmakers, while the studio managed financing, distribution and merchandising deals. The deal also enabled Emmerich and Devlin to receive 15% first dollar gross on the film while the original producers Cary Woods and Robert Fried would be given executive producer credits. Instead of employing Digital Domain as Jan de Bont planned for his Godzilla, Emmerich and Devlin decided to use their own effects team such as Volker Engel as the film's visual effects supervisor, Joe Viskocil as miniature effects supervisor, Clay Pinney as mechanical effects supervisor, and William Fay as executive producer of the team.12 Viewpoint DataLabs created a digital model of Godzilla, nicknamed "Fred", for scenes that required a digital rendition of the monster. For scenes that required practical effects, Tatopoulos' studio created a 6th-scale animatronic model of Godzilla's upper-body as well as a 24th-scale Godzilla suit donned by stuntman Kurt Carley, however, the filmmakers favored CG over practical effects and as a result, the final film features 400 digital shots, 185 of which feature Godzilla, and only two dozen practical effects used in the final film. Filming Production began in May 1997, in New York City, and moved to Los Angeles in June. Scenes in New York were filmed in 13 days; tropical scenes were filmed in the Hawaiian Islands. The United States Marine Corps participated in the filming of the movie. An F-18 Marine Reserve pilot, Col. Dwight Schmidt, actually piloted the plane that "fired" the missiles that killed Godzilla. Soundtrack Main article: Godzilla: The Album The soundtrack featuring alternative rock music was released on May 19, 1998 by Epic Records. It was a success on the music charts, peaking at number 2 on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum on June 22, 1998. The original score was composed by David Arnold. The film's score was not released on CD until 9 years later, when it went on sale as a complete original film score in 2007 by La La Land Records. The album was supported by the single "Come with Me" performed by Sean Combs and Jimmy Page. Release Marketing Bob Levin, chief of marketing for the film, was caught by surprise when Emmerich insisted not to use full body images or head shots of Godzilla during the marketing, Levin stated, "we got indications from them that they really didn’t think that the full figure Godzilla should be at all exposed prior to the release of the film. While initially we reacted negatively to that, once we understood their thinking behind it, it became completely acceptable to us." 300 companies signed an agreement not to show the full image of Godzilla before the film was released. Prior to principal photography, Emmerich filmed a teaser trailer, budgeted at $600,000, that featured Godzilla's foot crushing the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex at a museum. It debuted a year before the film's release. A full trailer was later released with Starship Troopers. Taco Bell contributed to the marketing of the film with $20 million in media support. The marketing campaign featured commercials of the Taco Bell chihuahua chanting, "Here, lizard lizard lizard!" while attempting to trap the monster in a box. Trendmasters manufactured the toys for the film, including the 11-inch tall "Living Godzilla" and the 21-inch tall "Ultimate Godzilla". However, poor merchandise sales for the film led to a cancellation of a toyline based on the animated series. Robert Fried had estimated that $80 million was spent on marketing worldwide. Category:TriStar Pictures films Category:Sony Pictures Entertainment Films Category:Science fiction films